Zii E Zie

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About Zii E Zie

Brazilian legend Caetano Veloso's 41st album, 'Zii e Zie,' released last year in South America and Europe, had already earned him a Latin Grammy for 2009 Best Singer-Songwriter album. The Times of London recently declared, 'The Brazilian master remains in a league of his own. Forty years after injecting a rock beat into Brazilian pop (and earning the disapproval of the country's military rulers in the process), Veloso has returned to similar territory... longtime fans won't be disappointed.' The 67 year-old Veloso conjures an air of mischief and even a little mystery starting with the title, an Italian phrase for 'uncles and aunts' that he espied in a book and chose because he likes the way the simple words sound and look. Listeners may feel the same way about the music of 'Zii e Zie': the sheer sound of Veloso's ageless voice offers tremendous pleasure even before one delves into the translations of his at times eyebrow-raising lyrics, which range from the bluntly political to the boldly sexual, or begins to savor his playfully inventive arrangements. Veloso, produced by Pedro Sa and son Moreno Veloso, is joined on 'Zii e Zie' by the same youthful trio he employed on the brash and beautiful 'Cê,' an album that upended expectations with its set of rock-oriented tracks boasting an almost punk-like immediacy. As David Byrne described 'Cê' in Artforum, 'Veloso has found a sparse, post-rock beauty in which strange yet simple rock instrumentation is juxtaposed with softly seething vocals.' On 'Zii e Zie,' Veloso reverses the equation. Here, samba is the foundation, filtered through a rock sensibility with an undercurrent of funk. Veloso himself has taken to calling this approach 'trans-samba' or 'trans-rock' - like 'transsexual,' he pointedly joked in an interview. His subject matter can still be intensely personal but he also takes a broader view of the world at large. At times he's like a camera, surveying the beaches of Rio, where he contemplates a dark-skinned girl in a bright bikini or scrutinizes with a wizened eye Rio's most exclusive hilltop neighborhood. He exposes his lust as frankly as Iggy Pop on 'Tarado ni Voce'/'Horny For You' and expresses his rancor about the Bush years with equal candor on 'A Base de Guantanamo.' Says London's Guardian, 'The songs are intimate and surprising, with sudden bursts of electric guitar transforming the easy-going 'Falso Leblon,' and hand-claps and funk guitar lines matched against the laid-back vocals on 'A Cor Amarela.' Best of all, there's the half-spoken 'A Base de Guantánamo,' which sounds like a classic and angry protest song even if you can't speak Portuguese.'